by Steve Perry
Maro said nothing, only waited.
"The point is," Stark continued, "that I'm running things here until the Confed, in its wisdom, decides to send me elsewhere. And while I'm here, everybody answers to me. I'm a fair man. You stay out of trouble, mind your exhaust, and you stay healthy. You give me trouble, and I can turn you into puree, you copy?"
Maro nodded. "I hear you."
Stark nodded. "Good. I read your stats. You should have stayed in smuggling. We've got a city full of killers here, and some of them could swat you dead backhanded without raising a sweat. You're here forever, Maro; get used to it. I see you've escaped from a couple of the backwater lockups where you were caught. That won't happen here."
Maro said nothing. He'd heard this speech before.
"You have something the Confed wants," Stark continued. "Information on Black Sun. They are sending a man to… discuss it with you. That doesn't matter. You are mine until he gets here, and if you survive his questioning, you are mine when he leaves. Make it easy on yourself or make it hard, I don't care—it's up to you. That's all."
Stark turned back to the window, and Maro started to leave. The door slid open, and—"
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen stepped inside.
She was an albino. Her hair, worn down to the middle of her back, was as white as frozen CO2; her skin was smooth and flawless, and her eyes were an impossible blue, as icy as a glacier. She was maybe a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, and might go fifty-five kilos. She wore a prison orthoskin, as he did, but it had been tailored to her form, revealing a flare of hip and shoulder and breast that almost literally took his breath away. Of a moment, Maro found his heart pounding and his mind clutched by a surge of lust unlike anything he had ever before felt.
He had been with dozens of women, some of whom had been professionals at every aspect of sexuality to orgasm and beyond, but none of them had ever had the hard visceral effect this woman had on him now. He wanted to grab her, pull her to him and take her, then and there, and to Deep with the consequences.
Dimly, as from a great distance, he heard Stark say behind him, "Ah, Juete."
Shoo-et-tay. What—?
A guard appeared in the doorway behind the incredible woman. "Let's go," he said. It took a second for Maro to realize the guard was speaking to him. As he left, he turned to stare at the woman before the door slid closed to hide her from him. He felt shaken, as though he'd been punched in the solar plexus and still couldn't quite catch his wind.
The guard looked at him and laughed, a nasty sound. He knew something Maro didn't about this, and, more than anything, the smuggler wanted to find out what it was. But he said nothing. He would be damned if he would ask and thus put himself in debt. He didn't want to owe anybody anything.
Not yet, anyway…
Stark moved to the albino woman, put his arms around her and kissed her passionately, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. She responded mechanically, like a robot whose timing was a second slow. He felt the usual stab of disappointment, but he continued the kiss for a moment before breaking off and smiling, not letting her see how it bothered him. Some day, he told himself; some day she would come to him willingly. He loved her, and therefore, given enough time, she would learn to love him.
"Who was that?" she asked. Casually, as if she cared not at all to know.
"Nobody," Stark replied, feeling a pang of jealousy. She was an Exotic, he knew, and it was bred into her genes what she did, but he still hated the idea of her with any other man. Hated it. But at the same time he felt his passion rising at the thought. He grew hard, visualizing Juete with Maro.
He took her hand and guided it to his crotch. She began to stroke him. After a moment, he saw the flush that showed she was excited too. Stark smiled. She might not love him, but he triggered her responses quickly enough.
"Take off your clothes," he said. "I want to see you."
Quickly, she complied. So pale, so beautiful, the thatch of downy white at her mons barely covering her labia— gods, he couldn't wait! Stark pulled her to him and lifted her from the floor, holding tightly to her buttocks as he pressed himself, still dressed, against her. Juete gasped at the fierceness of it, and he smiled into her white hair as he bit her neck.
The cell they gave him was not as bad as some he had been in. It was three meters by three meters square, close to the same height. The front wall was finger-thick durasteel diamond-patterned mesh; the two side walls and ceiling were ferrofoam slabs with stacked-carbon stringer cord bracing; the back wall was of that strange material that made up large sections of the prison. Curious, he moved closer and examined it. It was oddly featureless and nonreflective, looking as much like the still surface of a midnight lake as metal. He touched it, then snatched his hand away. It was surprisingly cold.
In one corner was a tiled squat, probably white once but now a dull gray. A single hole in the center of the slightly concave utility served as both excreta portal and drain; there was a showerhead mounted on the wall with a single button control.
On the opposite side of the cell was a cot, chain-folded against the wall to allow more space. No sink, no mirror, but an open-faced cabinet held a towel, a tube of soap, another of depil, and a roll of tissue.
Maro walked to the cabinet and pulled off several sheets of tissue. He then moved to the squat and dropped the pulpy paper into the hole. There came a slight grinding noise as the disposal unit kicked on. Standard prison issue. Anything small enough to be shoved down that hole wasn't going to stop it up, not with an industrial-grade grinder working in it. Welcome home, Dain. Well, at least he wasn't going to have a roommate to deal with.
Abruptly, from across the corridor, Maro heard somebody yell, "New meat! Hey, copy all, new meat in the Redhead's dump!"
He looked up to see a fat, droll-looking man of about fifty T.S. standing at the mesh of the cell across the corridor, staring at him.
"The tag's Berque," the fat man said. "You got an unlucky dump, f'lo'man. The Redhead, he got cooked going over the wall this morning."
"I saw it," Maro said.
"Yeah?" The man who called himself Berque ran chubby fingers through his greasy brown hair. "So we all did, f'lo'man. The warden, he had it cast on full holoproj ten minutes after it went up."
"I saw it coming in. Live."
"Juicy, hey?"
Maro turned away. The look on Berque's face made him want to gag. He'd met too many people—women as well as men—who enjoyed watching pain and death. He remembered what Stark had said: this place was full of killers. Some of them might have been dropped-shot as he had been, but most of them had, no doubt, enjoyed their crimes. A careless move could get him killed. Not a pleasant thought, to die in the Omega Cage. Death came to everyone, and Maro never considered himself a coward, but it would be stupid to meet his end in this forsaken hole—and worse to do it as the result of being framed for something he hadn't done.
Across the way, Berque said, "Hey, hey, don't take me wrong! It was a terrible thing, terrible!" His tone of voice sounded sympathetic, but the shift was altogether too artful for Maro to believe in. Berque was a man to trust for less distance then he could be thrown one-handed, and one not to turn an unprotected back to under any circumstances, Maro figured.
He unfolded the cot from the wall and snapped it into position. His new bed was of slunglas struts and rip-stop synthetic cloth, he saw, and not likely to come apart without sharp tools and muscle. If he had the tools, he likely wouldn't need the cot's materials; still, it was something to keep in mind.
Maro stretched out on the cot. Not too bad. He was tired; might as well rest while he could. He triggered a mental relaxation drill and, in a few minutes, was deep in sleep. He dreamed of the albino woman—and other things.
Chapter Three
A hand wand, a goddamned short-range hand wand, was all he had had when it went sour. Maro hadn't wanted to spook the buyer, so he'd left his heavy skjuta neatly tucked away on his ship. The
stubby automatic pistol shotgun held six rounds in its magazine, each shell loaded with five 9mm steel balls. He could have cleared the room with it and been gone. If he had had it—
Might as well wish for a tactical nuke, he thought as he scrambled for the fresher. There were enough people in the dimly lit port bar to impede the cools' progress as they chased the four men and two women who'd been at Maro's table. The hand wand was low-powered and small, a sleeve gun whose pulse would knock a man senseless across a table, but outside of three meters, he might as well throw the fucking thing. As he cleared the fresher's door, he pulled the weapon and thumbed the safety off.
The window was cheap plastic, impervious to the occasional drunk who might pitch a glass at it, but not designed to withstand a major assault. Maro tore the fire extinguisher from the wall over the stagnant urinal and threw it. The clear plastic window popped out in a single piece and clattered outside on the alley's surface, followed by the heavy cannister. Maro didn't hesitate, but ran and jumped for the window. There would be cools at the entrance and exit, but maybe they wouldn't think to cover the fresher. It was his only chance.
The opening was tight; he scraped one shoulder squeezing through. As he dragged his hips over the sill he heard somebody yelling behind him.
"Police! Hold it!"
He didn't try to turn, but continued through head first. Fortunately, the window was high enough so that his feet cleared the opening in time for him to tuck and roll as he hit the alley's floor. He would have sprinted away, but he knew the cool would get a shot through the fresher's window before he could get past the mouth of the alley. So instead of running, Maro finished the roll, banging his hip on the fire extinguisher, and shoved himself back against the wall in a crouch. He slammed into the fake brick under the window and dropped to a sitting position, then looked up.
The cool was beefy, but fast. He jammed his right arm and shoulder through the opening, followed by his head. Too big to get through, Maro figured, but small enough to use the handgun he clutched. A 6mm needler, probably loading shocktox.
Before he could look around, Maro raised his hand wand and thumbed the firing stud. The flash hit the cool and he screamed and fell back into the fresher, dropping the needler. He'd be numb everywhere the hand wand's electronic bath touched him, but he hadn't taken a full body jolt. If he had a backup piece, his left arm was still good—
Maro snatched up the fallen needler and ran. The reflected light from the huge ringed gas giant that dominated the night sky made it impossible to hide in the shadows. Nobody was watching the alley, but when he cleared the end at a dead run, a cool leaning against a flitter spotted him. He went for his sidearm, but Maro raised the needler and fired it on full auto, waving it back and forth. At least one of the hail of flechettes got past the armor, for the cool doubled up in sudden paralysis and rolled onto the hood of the flitter.
The needler in his hand started to beep. Ah, shit! He hadn't thought the police on this one-rocket planet would have personally coded hand weapons. He flung it away into the darkness; in another ten seconds it would be a puddle of molten plastic and metal. He was lucky he'd managed to fire it at all before the self-destruct circuit was triggered.
His ship, he had to get to his ship! The planet didn't space much of a navy; if he could lift and clear air defenses, he could outrun their lumbering cruisers. This port city of Kito Mfalme—King's Jewel, the natives called it—had the only spaceport in the western hemisphere. Once he got to his ship, his chances would be vastly improved.
As Maro ran through the dim streets, he wondered which of the others had turned them in. It had to be a set-up. Benares wouldn't have done it; he was going to make a nice profit and money was his god; Lunt wanted those contraindicated virals so bad he would have thrown his balls in as part of the deal, so he couldn't see Lunt opting for cool interference; that left Morrel and the two women, none of whom Maro knew. It must have been one of them. All had been vouched for, of course, but that meant little. Obviously.
He had deliberately hangared his ship in the run-down section of the port, the part that had once been a military section and was now gone mostly to rust and warp. Aside from being poorly lit and watched, the hangar backed up to the perimeter fence. Before leaving the area, Maro had rigged a roll-up cable and extender from the hangar roof, set to a sonic switch. A good smuggler tried to cover as many of his bets as possible. He grinned as he thought of it. Always leave the back door open, old Vickers had taught him, and that's what he'd done.
The place he had chosen lay in the dark between two pools of HT light. Maro looked around, saw that he wasn't being followed, and took a few seconds to catch his breath. The three-meter-tall mesh fence, despite its age and apparent lack of maintenance, carried a heart-stopping electrical charge. Such current discouraged climbers, but he had allowed for that.
Maro took a deep breath and whistled: three short notes, then one final long note. From the roof five meters above him, the extender clicked on and a plastic rod telescoped outward. After a moment a thick coil of synsilk rope began to extrude from the end of the extender like paste from a tube. It only took a few seconds for the rope to reach him. Maro began to climb, hand over hand. He was a good meter away from the fence, but he moved carefully despite that.
Once on the roof, it was easy enough to retract the extender and climb down the rope on the inside of the fence. On the ground, he moved cautiously around the hangar. It was quiet inside, and only walkway lighting cast its faint glow along the floor. There stood his ship, the Volny Vickers, a converted minesweeper that looked as if it was due to be cut up for scrap. Right now, however, he could not imagine anything looking better to him.
He wasn't scheduled to leave for a week, so there was no dins working on his ship. He had enough fuel to reach either Mtu or the Green Moon, and no one on either of those worlds was looking for him. From there he could bend space and head for either the Nazo System or the Svare Star Group, leaving the Bibi Arusi System behind like a bad memory.
Maro cycled the lock open, ordered the computer to begin powering up, and headed for the control room. Once in his form chair, he felt a thousand percent better. "Calculate a polar slingshot orbit," he told the computer.
From behind him, a voice said, "Going somewhere, cool killer?"
Maro was very careful not to move.
"I ought to burn you where you sit," the voice continued. "They don't like murderers in the King's Jewel. Especially when you kill one of their own."
"Can I turn around?"
"Yeah—slowly and with great care."
Maro turned the form chair and found himself facing a tall and aristocratic-looking man, wearing a skinmask and holding a heavy-bore pellet pistol pointed at him.
"That officer you shot in the fresher died, you know."
Maro shook his head. "No way. Nobody dies from a hand wand pulse, especially a partial flash on low power."
"Sue the manufacturer. He's dead and you did it, as far as the local police are concerned."
Maro stared at the man. Why would a cool care if somebody saw his face? "You're not police. Who are you?"
The face under the mask grinned. "Clever boy, aren't you? But not so clever as to avoid treading in places you'd been warned to avoid, eh?"
Maro took a deep breath. "Black Sun," he said.
"We don't like that name much. We prefer to be called the 'Corporation.' "
"You set me up."
"Let's just say that you freelance smugglers are going to have to learn company policy—and you're this week's example. You are going to go away, Maro. As far away as one can get."
Maro gathered himself. Maybe he could distract the man. He was only about three meters away—
"Don't bother," the masked man said. "I'd just as soon shoot you, though my orders didn't specify that option if it could be avoided. No, we need our show trial and conviction. That way you get to live—for a while, anyway."
"I could ask for a truthscope," Maro said
. "I could lay this out for them."
The masked man laughed. "Who do you think would be running the 'scope? We own the brain scramblers on this planet. We own lots of things on this planet. You'd be better off to keep your mouth and mind shut, Maro, and take your loss gracefully. The Corporation would prefer that its name not come up, if you copy my meaning?"
Maro slumped back into his chair. They had him. They'd gone to a lot of trouble to get him, and he felt the power of it all around him. "Yeah. I copy."
The skinmask smiled. "Good. Nice to do business with a reasonable man. And nothing personal, you understand?"
"Sure. Nothing personal."
"Fine. You can get up. Get up. Get up. Get up…"
"—get up!"
Maro came out of the dream sweating. For a beat, he didn't know where he was—then it came back all too quickly.
A guard stood at the door to his cell, a big man who, from the look of the muscles swelling his uniform orthoskins, had spent more than a little time on a heavy-gee world. He had a face that practically radiated hate, deepset eyes under thick blond eyebrows, and a sneer that showed several perfect teeth.
The dream was the same as the memory, and he'd revisited both dozens of times in the last three months. Better, he knew, to face up to this unpleasant present than to dwell in the unchangeable past.
"They call me Lepto, when they speak to me," the guard said. "And they don't speak unless I give them leave. You understand what I am telling you here?"
Maro nodded.
"That's good, fresh meat. Come on. We're going to the yard, you and me, and I am going to see how much they chew on you out there before I pull them off. You give me a good show, meat, and I don't let them kill you. You curl up too quick, and maybe I kill you myself. You understand what I am telling you here?"
